Echoes of War, Ch 8: Red Omen (Patreon)

Sam sat at the center of the traveling platform with items spinning around him. Starlight streaked past outside. The journey back to Aster Fall was long, but to him it was all one blur of extended time and crafting. The nagas had become restless after the first year of travel and gone to hibernate, sleeping on the Ice Drake as they waited for the next battle, so only he was still awake.

The passing time was a rare opportunity to hone his craft. It moved from one moment to the next as concepts cycled through his mind, moving in time with the materials in the air as he wove enchantments. Some were new and others old, merging with his memories from the Dream. Runes flared in circles of power as they imprinted themselves into the bones and metal, changing their underlying properties.

To one side, a swirling tempest of astral ice was spinning like a contained hurricane inside a band of runes that was engraved on the platform. Arcs of essence rose up from them, feeding into the storm. Now and then, an item from those around him flew past and merged into the storm. When it passed over the runes, it set off a crackle of frozen silver lightning, illuminating the figure of a golem that was being constructed at the center.

His Elemental Mastery constantly poured into the enchantment to create the base materials, followed by Elemental Smithing to improve them. Now and then, he walked into the storm, grabbing something by hand and reshaping it to fit his intent. Ice was the easiest to create, but he was succeeding more often than not in creating stone as well, pulling it from the Void outside the platform. Metal was still beyond him, but he had a lot of materials from his travels to use.

This golem was different from the ones he’d made before, larger and more complex with a thirty-foot wingspan, but the original aquiline design of Silverbeak and the other assault golems was clear in the overall structure. He hadn’t rebuilt Silverbeak yet, since he wanted to perfect his art, but he would in time.

The construction was one of the main pursuits he’d engaged in over the past years. His dimensional bracelet stored dozens of different models. It was slow to build them, but he had the time and attention to spare. It also gave him a chance to test out different theories. Day by day, the Astral Construct ability from his Second Evolution advanced.

It wasn’t just for research. The nagas were powerful, but it wouldn’t hurt to have more forces when he arrived home.

He stood up and checked on the golem, but there was no problem with its progress. He was currently infusing the material to upgrade it to the Heroic tier and it would take a while longer. The drain on his essence was manageable. This method was slightly slower, but it gave him time to work on other things at the same time.

He left the enchantment to work as he walked to the front of the disk, where he looked out at the stars in the distance. They shimmered like gems in a thousand colors, appearing and disappearing as the platform moved. They were going at an incredible speed, so fast that even the stars were temporary, but his eyesight was better than it had been the last time he’d taken this journey and he could see each of them individually if he focused.

After a while, he walked back to the center of the platform and sat down again, turning his attention to another project while the golem construction continued. A silver blade appeared in his hands, its surface half-covered in an intricate enchantment pattern that burned with a bright blue flame. The enchantment was nearly done, but it needed a few more enhancement runes for the elemental flame to bond it to the wielder’s mana. He ran his palm along the blade, leaving a trail of flame behind as he considered the material’s structure and how to improve it.

Before the nagas went into hibernation, he’d collected all of their weapons and armor. In between other projects, he worked on them, making sure that his Silver Army was prepared for Aster Fall. He couldn’t let the nagas go unrewarded for their loyalty, especially when they fought for him.

Stars streamed past and the weapon in his hand changed to another, and then to a set of armor. One by one, he worked his way through the equipment. He didn’t pay attention to the time, only to the runes he was carving. Here and there, the laws of the Void came to mind, and he changed a rune, changing it into something more complex and powerful than he’d intended. Each movement was a meditation that helped him sort through his ideas.

His Blessing of Silver Stars was evident in the finished products, improving the quality and infusing an astral blessing into each one. Healing, Ice, and Flame abilities were the most common, but some of them boosted attributes or other elements.

Time passed, and months or perhaps a year later, he set the completed weapons aside and turned his attention to another area.

Between his hands, a warped sphere of space appeared. It was shades of black that bent into each other, creating distinct layers edged with silver light that felt sharper than a razor. They rotated around the center, transforming moment by moment. A silver flame was at the center, pulling everything toward it like a star.

This sphere was what the Will of the Path had given him to study dimensional laws. It was a type of puzzle that interlocked as the layers folded in on each other and reappeared in a different place, each of them resonating with the spatial signature of a nearby dimension, but the number of layers changed constantly. Sometimes there were twelve and other times forty. Whenever he tried to count them, it changed.

The key to solving the puzzle was to mimic the dimensional signature in a layer and to reproduce it with runes and his aura, and then to place it as an enchantment on top of just that layer. The speed required to create the correct signature and place it onto the sphere before the layer changed would have been mind-boggling to him once.

Now, it was just frustrating.

Runes flickered around his fingers as he isolated a layer and began to study it. A half-completed dimensional structure of silver runes was already forming as he started to match it to the layer. Dimensional signatures could be manipulated with different types of energy and the sphere would sometimes shift through the elements, but this one required pure astral energy, which was the most common one.

At that moment, a tremor of dimensional energy swept across the stars outside the platform. It was followed by a flash of red light like a comet that cut down at an angle toward the lower horizon on the left. Sam’s head snapped up at the strangeness of as he felt the Void hum. The half-completed enchantment dissolved into a wash of silver light.

In all his memories as a Titan, he’d never seen anything quite like that before. He could feel the Void around him as stable as ever, but something had just rung it like a bell. The energy signature was fading swiftly, but he was fairly sure it had come from one of the various subdimensions that were part of the Void. It felt like it had shifted.

That red comet was a wave of energy released in its wake as the dimensional space restabilized. It must have been visible for an immense distance. He rubbed his chin as he studied where the light had been. The Void was vast and there were far more things in it than he could claim to know, but it felt like a bad omen.

He touched the platform below him, scanning it for any issues, but the enchantment was strong. They were still heading directly to Aster Fall, passing through the darkest parts of the Chaos Wild. The Void here was more wild than other places, its energies hot and tumultuous. Perhaps that energy was like a volcano rumbling in its sleep.

The World Seal also came to mind, but it was very away. This energy was much closer. The two shouldn’t be connected. Nonetheless, it left him worried about what was happening on Aster Fall. He looked into the starry distance with a frown, his heart beating solemnly. The world was still too far away to sense. It would be for years. But he saw it in his mind’s eye, its blue and silver horizon shining with the light of the sun.

He flexed his hands and felt the muscles crackle, but there was nothing he could do to make the platform move faster. Instead, the dimensional focus reappeared, its layers shimmering with red light. This time, it was attuned to Fire. He glanced at it and then out at the Void before he shook his head and focused on his work.

*****

Time passed, one year blending into the next as he adjusted to his memories, practiced with dimensional laws, and studied the record of the World Seal and the Moonlight Relic that the Will of the Path had made for him. There was also a schematic of the World Core’s original design. The Will didn’t know everything that had happened on Aster Fall or what Asenya had done to create the Seal, but it understood enough to show him the basics.

That information took up years of study as he examined it, matched it with the core enchantment from the relic he’d learned so long ago, and analyzed the enchantments that tied the dimensional magic together. Somewhere in the middle of that, he finished unraveling the relic’s core enchantment, something that he’d wanted to do for a long time, but it was only the first step to his goals.

He made other progress as well, particularly with his class abilities. Astral Ice and Astral Fire gained a tier and reached Epic, as did Modify Aura thanks to his efforts in tearing apart the auras from the Blackscar Destroyers and weaving them into the golems. The beasts’ original penchant for violent destruction was too strong, so he had to convert it into a more focused drive, but their group formations and teamwork fit well, giving the golems an innate instinct for how to work together.

The number of golems continued to grow and eventually his Astral Construct ability reached Epic as well, unlocking 15 complete schematics for astral golems, with five each in the offensive, defensive, and utility branches, but the true number of golem variants he made was over a hundred by that point.

That was when he decided it was time to rebuild Silverbeak.

A full year of his attention was devoted to the project as he enhanced the materials and infused them with the strongest auras he had on hand. It was a far cry from the week or two that he’d had to build the golem originally. This time, he wasn’t just rebuilding his first golem. He wanted to give his constructs a commander, one that was stronger than the rest and could lead them in battle.

He merged the remnant parts of Silverbeak’s old construction into the new materials to give the golem a sense of history, and then he focused his efforts on upgrading every single piece to Heroic. Elemental Smithing radiated around him like a stellar corona as he crushed materials between his hands, reducing them down to their essential properties before he built them back up again.

Molten metals from the depths of the Void spiraled around him in crackling streams that radiated with heat. Runes flared along the surface of the streams, floating up from the metal that ran like a river before diving back beneath the surface. Gemstones flared with auras in their center as some turned to liquid and others splintered into dust and fused into the golem’s heart.

All around Sam, the storm of astral ice that had been spinning for decades now roared with a fury, pouring a torrent of silvery ice toward the center. Slowly, the core expanded, growing from the size of his fist to a glowing shell that was thirty feet across. Etched lines of feathers were tightly pressed together on the surface, their edges interlocked to make a perfect sphere.

A tide of astral flame crashed around the sphere, keeping it molten as essence poured into it. The final enchantment flowed across the surface as Sam etched one rune after the other, turning the sphere in front of him to reach every side. By the time he was done, the golem was engraved on every available surface with a powerful tracery of runes and the edges of each feather glowed like they’d been dipped in liquid flame.

When it was done, Sam placed his hand on top of the sphere. His palm was so large that it covered a quarter of it. A powerful hum of energy rose up from the interior like a sleeping dragon.

“Awaken,” he said quietly as he activated the final rune at the center. “Duty calls.”

The giant sphere trembled as astral energy poured across the surface, flaring through every seam where the feathers joined together. A mighty pulse of energy rolled outward as the wings flexed. Then the wings began to move, spreading outward in brilliant arcs. At the center of the sphere, the golem’s eagle body was revealed, its head tucked under a wing. The metallic feathers on its chest gleamed with an intricate crystalline light that released a combination of astral energy and flame.

Sam reached out and patted the golem’s head, rubbing it between the pointed ears. The feathers were made from densely infused metal, but they rippled like goose down beneath his hand.

“Welcome back, Silverbeak.”

The golem stirred, its eyes opening as they flared with silver light and fixed on Sam. They were as sharp as a hunting hawk’s, their intensity piercing. Then the golem’s silver beak parted with a brief squawk. Astral flames flared from the edge of the hooked surface as it nudged his hand in greeting.

Then it looked around. Its eyes studied the platform and the stars flashing past beyond, before it looked back at him and let out a disconsolate chirp.

“Sorry, but it won’t be long before you can test out your wings,” Sam said with a chuckle as he rubbed its head again. “Go back to sleep for now. When you wake again, it will be on Aster Fall where you can truly fly.”

Silverbeak let out another chirp and then it tucked its head back down as its wings folded in, returning to its form as a giant sphere. The feathers closed back together without any interruption except the lines of the enchantment, making it look like an intricately engraved egg.

Sam placed the golem carefully into his dimensional bracelet with the others, and then he studied the result of his work.

Silverbeak

Level 350. Aura Construct. Legendary.

Astral Assault Golem. Command Class.

Runic Command Core: Capable of autonomous operation, commanding lower-ranked astral constructs, and overseeing complex battle operations. Capable of being the central focus of joint enchantments and abilities.

Primary Abilities: Dimensional Flight, Wing Blades, Astral Tempest, Meteor Strike, Ice Talon, Self-Repair.

Command Abilities: Astral Tempest, Meteoric Bombardment, Glacial Prison.

Sam nodded with satisfaction. Level 350 was as high as he could make the golem, even with Astral Construct at Epic, since it couldn’t be too much above his own level, but the level didn’t matter as much as the golem’s abilities. Silverbeak’s upgraded abilities were much more developed than the level could describe.

The golem was stronger than ever and the command enchantment looked like it was functioning properly. It would allow Silverbeak to take control of the lower-ranked golems and organize them into a proper army. He could also function as the central focus of mass enchantments that drew on the energy of the entire group, like the joint abilities for Astral Tempest and Meteoric Bombardment. Those should be impressive when a hundred golems joined in.

Instead of Heroic, his classification was Legendary, which related to the unique design more than anything. Legendary and Heroic were similar in strength, but Legendary tended to have more unique qualities, including both positives and negatives. Either way, Silverbeak would be useful on Aster Fall.

Sam cracked his knuckles as he walked to the front of the platform and considered the time remaining. He could feel Aster Fall approaching in the distance, along with the unique signature of the World Core. One of them resonated with a familiar sense of mountains and wild elements, like the mana he’d seen crashing down into the Storm Plains so long ago, and the other hummed with a power that felt like it could pierce the sky. The amount of essence in it was so incredible that it drew him toward it with a nearly irresistible attraction.

He shook his head as he shoved the feeling aside. Fortunately, that sense for the World Core was a racial awareness, and not something that the Vos’Rekan would sense. But it made sense now why the Titans had all been tempted to go through the Nexus. The energy coming from the World Core represented the other side and all of the potential that was there.

The memory of that red comet that had shaken the Void made him study the stars for a while, but there was no change. After that single appearance, it hadn’t happened again. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was an ill portent. After a little while, he headed back to the center of the platform with a frown and returned to work.

There was still some time before he arrived. He wanted to have a large stockpile of scrolls and artifacts that he could hand out. He also had some ideas for more personal artifacts for his own use, especially now that he’d had all of the practice with the nagas’ gear and the golems. It had been a long time since he created equipment for himself besides his bracers.

It was time to see what he could do.

A new tempest of materials began to swirl around him, gathering like worlds orbiting a sun. Piles of rare metal, Heroic auras, gemstones pulled from the heart of the Chaos Wild, beast hides that had been tempered by wild essence, bones and claws that were harder than starsteel, scales from Fourth Evolution beasts, and piles of radiant essence stones floated in the air as he began to purify them.

Designs appeared in silver flames on the work table in front of him, only to be wiped away and replaced by another. His eyes were distant as he looked toward Aster Fall, considering what he would need when he arrived. Thoughts of Outsiders he'd fought, the Flaws he'd seen, the World Seal, and the relic filled his mind. As each one appeared, the enchantment in front of him changed, becoming more complex.